No child Left Inside: Brrrrrrr in Minnesota

In this recent series following the news on outdoor recreation around the United States, Minnesota is following a well worn path.

The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources put out a call for its first round of No Child Left Inside grants in October.

The requests were modest — schools, nonprofits and community organizations could ask for up to $5,000 to support programs that get kids outdoors — but the response was overwhelming.

"Within six minutes,” the DNR’s Jeff Ledermann said, “we had 200 applications."

Ledermann oversees the new program as a supervisor in the DNR’s fish and wildlife outreach office. He said the agency received a flood of applications in just a few days, leaving his team with the unenviable task of deciding which 60 of the 450 pitches for everything from showshoes to an orienteering course would get funding.

Many of the grant requests were for purchasing equipment, like cross-country skis.

"But the majority of the projects were really just trying to do classes outside, right at their school, right on their campus,” Ledermann said, “which was really encouraging."

Lawmakers allocated $1.2 million to the program last year, for outdoor recreation and education projects, and to fund school-based outdoor sports like trapshooting and fishing teams.

The effort garnered bipartisan support because it has broad appeal: Research shows that spending time outdoors improves kids’ physical and mental health; helps foster a sense of environmental stewardship; and it’s good for the state’s bottom line, at a time when Minnesota has seen a decline in hunting and fishing license sales.

https://www.mprnews.org/story/2020/01/09/no-child-left-inside-small-grants-for-getting-kids-outdoors-in-high-demand